Medical Students Have Unconscious Bias Against Obese People

A new finding published in the Journal of Academic Medicine states that two out of five medical students have an unconscious bias against obese people.

This study was conducted by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

"Bias can affect clinical care and the doctor-patient relationship, and even a patient's willingness or desire to go see their physician, so it is crucial that we try to deal with any bias during medical school," said David Miller, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study, in a press statement.

Prior to this, studies have shown that on an average, physicians develop a strong anti-fat bias that is similar to the general population. The doctors believe that heavy people don't abide by the treatment plans and they are less likely to respect patients who are obese.

Miller along with colleagues conducted a study to update the medical school's curriculum on obesity. Their main aim was to measure the occurrence of unconscious obesity biases among the medical students and to analyze whether or not they were aware of the biases.

The three-year study was done with 300 medical students between 2008 and 2011. With the help of a computer program called the Weight Implicit Association Test (IAT), they measured the students' unconscious preferences for "fat" or "thin" .

They noticed that 39 percent of the students had moderate to strong conscious anti-fat bias whereas 17 percent had a moderate to strong anti-thin bias.

This fat stigma is a barrier in treatment and informing the medical students about the bias is important in order to improve the treatment of obese American adults.